War and Peace and Germs

Aaahhh, ubiquitous germs.  In peace they’re used for research and made as basis for vaccines that ensure human immunity to their ravages.  In war they are used as weapons of mass destruction.

Biological warfare is not new.  It can be traced back to ancient times, in Europe where the first use of biological weapons was recorded in the continent’s war history.

To say that the first use of germs as weapons in war smacks of cruelty and creativity is an understatement.  Tartar soldiers who laid the medieval city of Kaffa in a state of siege threw dead bodies of soldiers over the city’s walls.  Infection, contagion, and the pandemic that became known as the plague of the 1300s spread throughout the continent.

In more civilized times, there seemed to be a repeat of the war with cadavers as weapons.  When Russia and Sweden fought in the early 18th century, the Russians were said to have used dead bodies of plague victims to cause an epidemic to the Swedes.

The support of American Indians in the mid-18th century war between the French and English in North America was necessary for both warring sides. The latter sustained heavy losses until the English general, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, furtively provided the Indians on the French side with blankets infected with small pox virus.  The disease devastated the Indians and the English went on to victory.

It is claimed that during World War I (1917), the Germans vaccinated glanders disease to horses and cattle in the United States and shipped them to France.

From the mid-1930s to the 1940s, Japan had operated the so-called “Unit 731” in Manchuria, a laboratory complex that the Japanese burned to the ground in 1945. The US offered amnesty to scientists at the laboratory on the condition that they reveal to the US government all information accumulated during their research.

It was alleged that by the end of the laboratory’s existence in 1945, the program had stockpiled 400 kilograms of anthrax to be used in a specially designed fragmentation bomb.

Earlier, in 1940, there was an epidemic of bubonic plague in China and Manchuria.  The Japanese were suspected to have caused it as the epidemic followed after flights by Japanese aircraft over the areas.  Infected fleas were dropped together with grain.  The local rat population that fed on the grain became the hosts for the infected fleas.  After the rats, the human population wasn’t far behind.

Amidst intelligence reports that Germany and Japan may be preparing for biological weapons, the US established a biological weapons program from 1943-1969, made known in 1946, with the policy that its use of biological weapons is, first, as a deterrent,  and second, as retaliation should deterrence fail.  The program was closed in 1969 with the declaration that henceforth bacteria and chemicals are to be used only for immunization and medical therapy.

Russia answered in 1956 with an announcement that its military will use both biological and chemical weapons in future wars.  Obviously the Cold War arms race wasn’t limited to nuclear weapons.

Then the United Nations comes up with the Convention against biological and toxin weapons of 1972, followed by the Biological Weapons Convention on the prohibition of the development, production and stockpiling of bacteriological (biological) and toxin weapons of 1975.  Ninety-two countries signed up.

But the ‘70s and ‘80s supposedly had “Yellow Rain” on areas in Laos and Kampuchea, followed by disorientation and sickness of people and animals.  Testimonies alleged that US planes and helicopters spread colored clouds.  No evidence can be had that the clouds were biological weapon attacks though.

Russia meanwhile had the 1979 Sverdlovsk Incident that awoke the world to the possibility that the country has a biological weapons laboratory.

By the early ‘90s the United Nations acquired evidence that Iraq may be in the early stages of developing offensive biological weapons. The claims, which were followed by a series of inspections and continued to be unverified, became one of the reasons for the attack on Iraq by the US.

The world comes up with rules to limit man’s capacity to self-destruct while countries with modern warfare capabilities continue to outdo each other in terms of arsenals.  Whether these countries, covertly or overtly, adhere strictly to the rules is another matter.

Only the germs around us are consistent, with a lesson on moderation.  A little of them protects while too much destroys.  Thankfully, the nations that use them either way no longer throw cadavers at each other.

(March 2006)